Health care prices

[rogerashton]

http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2016/01/variability-in-health-care-prices-and.html

The authors of the original study

estimate that monopoly hospitals have 15.3 percent higher prices than markets with four or more hospitals. Similarly, hospitals in duopoly markets have prices that are 6.4 percent higher and hospitals in triopoly markets have prices that are 4.8 percent higher than hospitals located in markets with four or more hospitals.

[GoneFishin]

1. So clearly economies of scale work in reverse for hospitals. They obviously should be broken up.

(yeah, I know)

[rogerashton]

2. Well, no,

I would say that we need price regulation -- treat hospitals as public utilities were treated back in the mid-twentieth century.